Mare

Mare

On the strand

My gaze towards the sea

With you I feel at one

Words drift towards me on the wind

Then dryly fall

Dry as the sandbar in the distance.

A splash of sunlight on my shoulder

The muffled wash of incoming waves

Above which the shrill laughing

Children's voices tumble

And in the midst of all this tumult

The discovery

That stills all else to silence:

The great ocean

That seems to have no end.

Mare

A splash of sunlight on your shoulder

Your hair that shines

From the glinting, spattering water:

A mermaid.

I pick up the shell

That lies at my feet

A house, a deserted house

Of an animal:

Angel wing.

Sometimes I feel like the animal

Sometimes the house, the shell

Together with you.

Mare

Later, much later

The image drifts up once more

On the ocean of my dreams

Takes on different forms

But never, never again

As on that day

On which you and I

Formed an unshakeable one-ness

With the ocean

As in an ancient covenant.

The Young Cartographer

“Daughter,” said my father,

“You will never leave these shores!”

He meant well, I know,

but in my mind I have already left.

Even now I watch him, a small cloaked figure

receding on the shoreline,

receding in the distance.

Even now, my pen draws out my coming voyage,

leaving a stark white wake

escorted by the screech of gulls

and the writhing coils of sea monsters,

and others must follow if they dare.

I stand upon the deck of my imaginings,

bracing myself against the squalls,

against the swell of green water,

against the wave-tossed billows,

against the unknown deeps

that are my surrounding charts.

My pen creates islands, whole continents,

archipelagos and inlets, which only exist

because I have drawn them.

My outstretched hands

span trackless oceans of parchment,

at last to sight a distant undiscovered shore.

Already I have made landfall,

already I am on that shore.

Even now, without leaving my study

I set out to discover this new and unknown land

which is myself.

Painting by Donato Giancola